


Battlefront

by Starofwinter



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Battlefield, Gen, POV Second Person, Shock, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 22:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12969789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starofwinter/pseuds/Starofwinter
Summary: No battle plan survives first contact, and after the bolts start flying, it’s anyone’s guess who’ll come out on top.





	Battlefront

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by watching gameplay of Battlefront 2.

Battles are chaos.  Uncontrolled, flaming chaos.  No battle plan survives first contact, and after the bolts start flying, it’s anyone’s guess who’ll come out on top.  Clones are damned good at battle, you’re bred, trained, and tested for it, but that doesn’t always mean you’re  _ better _ .  Sometimes, the elements are too bad or the enemy is too good.   Sometimes, the galaxy just flips a credit and sees who wins.  

All you can do is treat your wounded, mourn your lost, and keep fighting.

Day two of a battle is when things start going wrong.  You’re tired - no matter what the Kaminiise say, there’s a limit to what the body can take and how long it can keep going in battle conditions - and if you’re lucky, you’re just running on limited ammo and pure adrenaline.  If you’re not lucky, you’re trying not to bleed out before you can get to a medic.  There’s too much screaming over helmet comms to hear orders, and by then, you’ve tuned it all out anyway.  

By day three, it’s a survival game.  You just have to hold out long enough to hope the battle ends, and you’re still standing at the end of it.  The gun in your hand isn’t the one you started with, and you thank the vod you took it from every time it saves your life again.  At some point, you’re spattered with melted slag from a fighter that goes down, but you don’t even feel the heat or the sharp pain of shrapnel between armor plates.

Everything is still chaos - flashbangs are blinding, especially when you’re running with night vision.  Someone shouts, and you have just enough time to hit your belly when a heavy gunner cuts down the first wave of droids breaking through the line.  You roll to a crouch to stay under his line of fire, but you both need to get  _ out _ before you’re both trapped.  Just as you’re about to shout that to him, his blaster stutters to a stop and his weight crashes down on top of you - it’s sudden enough that you go down, and as the wave of droids marches past, you stay still and close your eyes and you ask anyone who’s listening that they don’t realize you’re still alive.

When they’re past, you take his gauntlet.  Why, you don’t know.  It fits easily enough as a replacement for your own, and you tell yourself that you’ll find whoever he was close with and pass it along, but can you really?  Can you look them in the eye and tell them that you watched him die?  It’s one of many lies you’ll tell yourself, but it’s the one that will haunt you the most.  

You head back to the bulk of the fighting, to the beautiful sound of the words, “Reinforcements incoming.”  It’s the best thing you’ve heard in weeks, and you try not to let tears of pure relief fall as you see the transports and gunships breaking through the cloud cover.

The battle is over so suddenly that you can’t really believe it.  It feels like it’s been raging for years, and not for only half a standard week.  The medics find you wandering in a daze and sit you down on a chunk of rubble, checking you over.  They stitch you up and wrap your injuries, but you don’t let them take the gauntlet.  You cling to it like a lifeline, your knuckles white where your fingers wrap around it.  When they let you go and send you back to the cruiser, it takes two of your buddies half an hour to talk you through putting it in your lock box and leaving it there to go clean up.  You feel like hell, you can barely think, you can’t keep your eyes open, and as you stand under the spray of water, letting the filth wash off your skin while you shiver, you think,  _ is this winning? _


End file.
